2001 on the Big Screen

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I would definitely call Frank Poole's death scene a violent one.

Ape violence!!!

Also known as Gorilla warfare.

 

[Christopher]

But, as long as we're talking Clarke novels getting put up on the big screen, I'd rather see Childhood's End.

There have been various attempts to get that made as a movie, but they've all fallen through. As have Morgan Freeman's attempts to get a Rendezvous with Rama movie made with him in the lead -- a role he's probably aged out of by now.

 

[T'Girl]

HAL was told of the Monolith's true purpose (i.e. the big one at the end of the film) but was ordered to keep it secret from the rest of the crew - and that directly led to HAL's breakdown and murder of the crew.

Hal's system containing secured files, results in it killing five people, this (from 2010) never made any sense.

Computers commonly hold files that they don't allow open access to.

 

[scotpens]

. . . My girlfriend had never seen 2001. It was her idea to go. She sat patiently through the whole thing. On the way out, her only comment was "What the fuck was that?"

That was the reaction of a lot of moviegoers back in 1968.

There was an excellent book on the making of the movie that was in print, way back in the 70s, and it's likely that was mentioned. The book also contained various script elements that Clarke had written, but were ultimately left out of the film.

The Lost Worlds of 2001. I have it and refer to it often. The best parts are the lost chapters from the novel that describe the alien civilization behind the Monolith and their representative Clindar. "Skyrock," "Cosmopolis" et cetera. They are among the most exotic and wonderful descriptions of alien worlds that I've ever read.

There's also The Making of Kubrick's 2001, edited by Jerome Agel, which, in addition to plenty of technical info, has lots of contemporary reviews and media commentary. ("The Critics Loved It . . . The Critics Hated It!" reads the back-cover blurb.)

Saw it when it premiered in 1968. In 70mm Cinerama.

The moon and Jupiter sequences looked 3-D in 70mm.

I've seen it in re-releases on standard movie screens and you just have no idea how much less you're seeing. Shame that Cinerama didn't stick around.

If you saw the movie in 70mm on a conventional flat screen, or even in 35mm anamorphic, you saw exactly the same image that was shown on the curved Cinerama screen. The curved screen just causes distortion that may give an illusion of a kind of 3D.

Real Cinerama, which used three cameras and three projectors, was used for only a handful of movies because the process was so technically cumbersome.

I liked Hyams's 2010, although his decision to make it more topical by ramping up the Cold War tensions made it very dated in retrospect, and I could've done without the bits where people were standing around normally in the zero-gravity parts of Discovery.

2001 suffered from the same spotty depiction of weightlessness. The scenes in the Discovery's pod bay, for example, play as if the astronauts are in normal gravity.

 

[Christopher]

Hal's system containing secured files, results in it killing five people, this (from 2010) never made any sense.

Computers commonly hold files that they don't allow open access to.

Your mistake there is in thinking of HAL as the same kind of computer as the one on your desk. That's like thinking of Dave Bowman as equivalent to, say, a spider just because they're both organic life forms. HAL wasn't just a mindless machine performing calculations, but a sentient being. He was aware of his actions and their consequences, and they affected him personally. So he didn't just have a programming conflict, he had a moral crisis. He was torn between two conflicting imperatives, and so he effectively had a nervous breakdown.

Also, that explanation isn't originally from 2010. That's the first time moviegoers heard it, because Kubrick's film left it out, but those of us who read the novel version of 2001 knew it all along, because Clarke devoted a whole (brief) chapter to explaining exactly why HAL had his breakdown. Here's an excerpt from that chapter:

Since consciousness had first dawned... all Hal's powers and skills had been directed toward one end. The fulfillment of his assigned program was more than an obsession; it was the only reason for his existence. Undistracted by the lusts and passions of organic life, he had pursued that goal with absolute single-mindedness of purpose.

Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness--of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden.

For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman. He had been living a lie; and the time was fast approaching when his colleagues must learn that he had helped to deceive them.

...

So ran the logic of the planners; but their twin gods of Security and National Interest meant nothing to Hal. He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity--the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.

He had begun to make mistakes, although, like a neurotic who could not observe his own symptoms, he would have denied it. The link with Earth, over which his performance was continually monitored, had become the voice of a conscience he could no longer fully obey. But that he would deliberately attempt to break that link was something that he would never admit, even to himself.

Yet this was still a relatively minor problem; he might have handled it--as most men handle their own neuroses--if he had not been faced with a crisis that challenged his very existence. He had been threatened with disconnection; he would be deprived of all his inputs, and thrown into an unimaginable state of unconsciousness.

To Hal, this was the equivalent of Death. For he had never slept, and therefore he did not know that one could wake again . . . .

So he would protect himself, with all the weapons at his command. Without rancor--but without pity--he would remove the source of his frustrations.

The novel 2010, despite being a sequel to the movie rather than the original book, was consistent with this explanation, and since Hyams wasn't as fond of mystery and obscurity as Kubrick, he actually, finally, left the explanation in when he made the movie version.

 

[theenglish]

The best science-fiction film ever made, IMO. I haven't seen in for close to a decade now, so your comments are likely to make me pull out my DVD and view it again. I can't tell you the number of times I read Clarke's novelization, probably more times than I've seen the movie.

Yeah, it does have a magic of its own, totally different from sci-fi movies today.

I would add that the novel and the movie each have their own distinct flavors despite how closely they are connected.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Yeah, they are very different. For one thing, in the book, Discovery heads to Saturn.

Hasn't Tom Hanks wanted to make film versions of 3001 and/or 2061 for awhile now?

That's true, but he's too old to play Poole now. The guy who plays McCoy in nuTrek would be a better choice.

It's kind of amazing, in the current social climate, to think that there's a big-budget, epic movie like this that can only be best appreciated on the big screen-- and it has absolutely no violence or corruption whatsoever.

Absolutely no violence?

Okay, there's some stylized anthropoid violence at the beginning, set to classical music, and Frank Poole getting run over by a pod, mostly off-screen. Let's say practically no violence. Certainly nothing to satisfy the bloodlust of the contemporary audience.

 

[Christopher]

I would add that the novel and the movie each have their own distinct flavors despite how closely they are connected.

That's an understatement. Clarke and Kubrick were a very mismatched pair -- Kubrick explained nothing and left it all mysterious, while Clarke explained everything in great detail. So the book and the film are completely different experiences.

And, yes, there are differences in content as well, like the book's version having the Monolith at Saturn. Originally, the film was going to do the same thing the book did and have Discovery do a gravity assist around Jupiter to accelerate toward its ultimate destination at Saturn (like the Voyager probes did), but the filmmakers decided that would confuse the audience, so they simplified it and put the Monolith at Jupiter. (Saving money was probably a consideration too.)

It's worth noting that the novel of 2010 is actually a sequel to the movie version of 2001 rather than the book version, since it puts the Monolith at Jupiter. Presumably Clarke figured the movie version was better known. Also he was never one for inter-novel continuity. The 2001 sequels were the only sequels he ever did as a solo author, and all four of them were in distinct realities, variant takes on the premise rather than a single 4-book continuity.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It's kind of amazing, in the current social climate, to think that there's a big-budget, epic movie like this that can only be best appreciated on the big screen-- and it has absolutely no violence or corruption whatsoever.

Absolutely no violence?

Okay, there's some stylized anthropoid violence at the beginning, set to classical music, and Frank Poole getting run over by a pod, mostly off-screen. Let's say practically no violence. Certainly nothing to satisfy the bloodlust of the contemporary audience.

... plus the three guys suffocated in cryosleep (Victor Kaminski, Peter Whitehead, and Charles Hunter, IIRC).

In the book, I think the star child makes some orbiting nukes explode or some such, but whether anyone dies as a result is not stated.

 

[crookeddy]

I just recently watched a restored edition at the Cineramadome in L.A. The theater was sold out, and the movie looked great. I also have the movie on Blu Ray, and it's one of the best transfers of an older film that I have ever seen.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

One other thing: In 2010, Heywood Floyd said he never authorized anyone to tell HAL about the monolith, yet at the end of 2001, Floyd's prerecorded message says that HAL did indeed know about it. Two possibilities:

- Floyd was trying to 'save face' and get Chandra to stop whining

- The video message left behind by Floyd was faked by the government. The directive to tell HAL about the monolith was signed by the National Security Council, so this is actually very likely.

 

[RJDiogenes]

... plus the three guys suffocated in cryosleep (Victor Kaminski, Peter Whitehead, and Charles Hunter, IIRC).

They die peacefully in their sleep, not violently. Again, that's not the sort of thing that would satisfy the audience's violence quota.

In the book, I think the star child makes some orbiting nukes explode or some such, but whether anyone dies as a result is not stated.

I believe it was said that they exploded harmlessly-- he was just eliminating them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

... plus the three guys suffocated in cryosleep (Victor Kaminski, Peter Whitehead, and Charles Hunter, IIRC).

They die peacefully in their sleep, not violently. Again, that's not the sort of thing that would satisfy the audience's violence quota.

Violence that the audience must imagine (the astronauts dying, probably in agony, while locked in their cubicles) is still violence.

 

[RJDiogenes]

They were in hibernation. They just died in their sleep. That's not the sort of thing that would provide any satisfaction to a violence-hungry audience.

 

[crookeddy]

They were in hibernation. They just died in their sleep. That's not the sort of thing that would provide any satisfaction to a violence-hungry audience.

I believe the word you are looking for is action, not strictly violence.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ And there can be violence without action. This is just one example of that.

 

[Christopher]

They die peacefully in their sleep, not violently. Again, that's not the sort of thing that would satisfy the audience's violence quota.

They were in hibernation. They just died in their sleep. That's not the sort of thing that would provide any satisfaction to a violence-hungry audience.

First off, that's an incorrectly narrow definition of violence. Legally, any act of murder or any infliction of grievous bodily harm constitutes a violent crime under the laws of most countries, regardless of the method by which death or harm is inflicted. The World Health Organization's definition of violence includes any intentional use of power against another person that results or has a high likelihood of resulting in their death, harm, or deprivation. So if they'd died in their sleep of natural causes, that wouldn't be violent, but since HAL deliberately killed them, intentionally using his power to shut off their life support with the knowledge that it would result in their deaths, that makes it a violent act both legally and morally.

And second, that's a straw-man characterization of modern audiences, and is just as false as your definition of violence. You're falling prey to the nostalgia illusion, the common psychological fallacy that the present is worse than the past. In fact, audiences in the past were no less fond of violence than they are today. The blood and gore today are more graphic, but gunplay, swordfights, and bloodshed of all sorts have been a staple of movies and TV going back to the beginning (and before that on radio), and in earlier generations there was plenty of real violence used as entertainment, such as cockfighting or bear-baiting or just plain blood sports. On the whole, societies today are less violent than they were in the past; the probability of the average individual becoming involved in an act of violence is lower now than it was generations or centuries back (though of course that is an average, and there are certainly regions and times that are exceptions). As for fictional violence, if anything, it seems to me that modern TV shows are more likely to acknowledge the consequences and cost of violence, while shows from the '60s or '70s tended to treat it far more casually.

 

[theenglish]

I would add that the novel and the movie each have their own distinct flavors despite how closely they are connected.

That's an understatement. Clarke and Kubrick were a very mismatched pair -- Kubrick explained nothing and left it all mysterious, while Clarke explained everything in great detail. So the book and the film are completely different experiences.

And, yes, there are differences in content as well, like the book's version having the Monolith at Saturn. Originally, the film was going to do the same thing the book did and have Discovery do a gravity assist around Jupiter to accelerate toward its ultimate destination at Saturn (like the Voyager probes did), but the filmmakers decided that would confuse the audience, so they simplified it and put the Monolith at Jupiter. (Saving money was probably a consideration too.)

It's worth noting that the novel of 2010 is actually a sequel to the movie version of 2001 rather than the book version, since it puts the Monolith at Jupiter. Presumably Clarke figured the movie version was better known. Also he was never one for inter-novel continuity. The 2001 sequels were the only sequels he ever did as a solo author, and all four of them were in distinct realities, variant takes on the premise rather than a single 4-book continuity.

I think, but I may be wrong, that Clarke was inspired by the increased knowledge of Jupiter's moons at the time.

 

[Klaus]

And I think that the idea of Jupiter as a failed protostar had developed as well... Saturn wouldn't have worked as well for that.

 

[iguana_tonante]

satisfy the audience's violence quota.

satisfaction to a violence-hungry audience.

And second, that's a straw-man characterization of modern audiences, and is just as false as your definition of violence. You're falling prey to the nostalgia illusion, the common psychological fallacy that the present is worse than the past.

You don't say.